Local Race Chat described itself as a state of the art news and message board in North Carolina, covering dirt and asphalt. To its members it was LRC, and it was a community of dirt and asphalt fans built around the short tracks of the Carolinas and the wider Southeast.
It ran from 2005 into 2016. The Internet Archive holds its first capture in November 2005 and its last useful one in November 2016. In those eleven years it carried race news, results, schedules, tech arguments and a great deal of ordinary talk from thirty four tracks that each had a forum of their own.
How the site was put together
The board itself was vBulletin. The front page was not the board but a vBadvanced portal sitting on top of it, pulling the newest news threads out of the dirt and asphalt news sections and listing them as headlines with the member who posted them. That is why a news archive can be recovered at all: the portal put the headlines on the front page, and the front page is what the crawler visited most.
Around the board were a PhotoPost photo gallery, a vBClassified marketplace for cars and parts, a hand kept links directory of regional racing sites, and a NASCAR fantasy league on its own Joomla install. Sponsor banners ran across the top. There was a Constant Contact newsletter. The navigation tabs read Home, Forum, Track Forums, Series Forums, Dirt News, Asphalt News, What’s New, Classifieds and Site Rules.
What was on the board
Forty eight sections in seven categories. General Dirt Forums held the dirt news, results and events section, a general dirt discussion section and the Tech Zone. General Asphalt Forums held the asphalt equivalents and the fantasy league. Track Forums was the largest category by a distance, with thirty four tracks in it. Vintage Racing had a section for vintage news and one called Ghost Tracks, for the places that had closed.
The Back Stretch was where the off topic talk went, along with a section called DRJ Dirt Racing For Jesus. Pit Road held the announcements, the help desk and, characteristically, a forum for birthdays. You can read the whole directory on the forums page.
How it was run
The site rules are the clearest surviving statement of what the staff wanted the place to be, and they are restored close to verbatim on the site rules page. They are firm about a few things: no bashing individuals, tracks or officials; no advertising unless you were paying for a banner; attack the message and not the messenger; and a long section headed RESPECT IS THE KEY that promises members will not have to leave their personality at the door.
This is a community of racing and automotive enthusiasts. Watch your P’s and Q’s when you write, and use emotion icons (smilies) if you think someone might take something you say offensively.
Local Race Chat site rules
The end of it
Captures from 2017 onward return errors and broken shells. By 2024 the domain was a parked page. No closing announcement survives in the archive, so this restoration does not claim to know why the site stopped or who made the decision. What can be said is that the last working capture is from November 2016 and nothing after that is the site.
This site is a restoration, not a relaunch. It is described in full on the restoration page, including what was recovered, what was replaced and what is gone for good.